Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847

NORTH AMERICA, SIBERIA, AND RUSSIA. 1

The circumnavigation of the world is now a matter of ordinary occurrence to our bold mariners: and after a few years it will be a sort of summer excursion to our steamers. We shall have the requisitions of the Travellers' Club more stringent as the sphere of action grows wider; and no man will be eligible who has not paid a visit to Pekin, or sunned himself in Siam.

But a circuit of the globe on terra firma is, we believe, new. Sir George Simpson will have no competitor, that we have ever heard, to claim from him the honour of having first galloped right a-head—from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Pacific to the British Channel. One or two slight divergencies of some thousand miles down the smooth and sunny bosom of the Pacific, are to be reckoned as mere episodes: but Sir George soon recovers his course, plunges in through the regions of the polar star; defies time, trouble, and Tartary; marches in the track of tribes, of which all but the names have expired; follows the glories of conquerors, whose bones have mingled five hundred years ago with the dust of the desert; gives a flying glance on one side towards the Wall of China, and on the other towards the Arctic Circle; still presses on, till he reaches the confines of the frozen civilisation of the Russian empire; and sweeps along, among bowing governors and prostrate serfs,—still but emerging from barbarism—until he does homage to the pomp of the Russian court, and finally lands in the soil of freedom, funds, and the income tax.

What the actual object of all this gyration may have been, is not revealed, nor, probably, revealable by a "Governor of the Hudson's Bay territories," who, having the fear of other governors before his eyes, dedicates his two handsome volumes to "The Directors of the Hudson's Bay Company;" but the late negotiations on Oregon, the Russian interest in the new empire rising on the shore of the Northern Pacific, the vigorous efforts of Russia to turn its Siberian world into a place of human habitancy, and the unexpected interest directed to those regions by the discovery of gold deposits which throw the old wealth of the Spanish main into the shade, might be sufficient motives for the curiosity of an individual of intelligence, and for the anxious inquiries of a great company, bordering on two mighty powers in North America, both of them more remarkable for the vigour of their ambition than for the reverence of their hunters and fishers for the jus gentium.

Those volumes, then, will supply a general and a very well conceived estimate of immense tracts of the globe, hitherto but little known to the English public. The view is clear, quick, and discriminative. The countries of which it gives us a new knowledge are probably destined to act with great power on our interests, some as the rivals of our commerce, some as the depôts of our manufactures, and some as the recipients of that overflow of population which Europe is now pouring out from all her fields on the open wilderness of the world.

This spread of emigration to the north is a curious instance of the reflux of the human tide; for, from the north evidently was Europe originally peopled. Japhet was a powerful propeller; and often as he has dwelt in the tents of Shem, he is likely to overwhelm the whole territory of the southern brother once more. The Turk, the Egyptian, the man of Asia Minor, the man of Thrace, will yet be but tribes in that army of the new Xerxes which, pouring from Moscow, and impelled from St Petersburg, will renew the invasions of Genghiz and Tamerlane, and try the civilized strength of the west against the wild courage and countless multitudes of Tartary. Into this strange, but important, and prospectively powerful country, we now follow the traveller. Embarking from Liverpool in the Caledonia, a vessel of 1300 tons and 450 horse power, he was amply prepared to face the perils of the most stormy of all oceans, the Atlantic. The run across lad the usual fortunes of all voyages, and within a week after their departure from terra firma they saw a whale, who saw them with rather more indifference, for he lay lounging on the surface until the steamer had nearly run over him. At last he dived down, and was seen no more. Next day, while there was so little wind, that all their light canvass was set, they saw the phenomenon of a ship under close-reefed topsails. This apparent timidity was laughed at by some of the passengers, but the more experienced guessed that the vessel had come out of a gale, of which they were likely to have a share before long, a conjecture which was soon verified.

On the morning of the 9th day, the captain, discovering that the barometer had fallen between two and three inches during the night, due preparations were of course made to meet the storm. It came on in the afternoon, a hurricane. Then followed the usual havock of boats and canvass, the surges making a clean breach over the deck; the passengers, of course, gave themselves up for lost, and even the crew are said to have been pretty nearly of the same opinion. However, the wind went down at last, the sea grew comparatively smooth, and in twenty-four hours more, they found themselves on the banks of Newfoundland. The writer thinks that it was fortunate for them that the storm had not caught them in the short swell of these shallow waters, as was probably the case of the President, whose melancholy fate so long excited, and still excites a feeling of surprise and sorrow in the public mind.

It was lost in this very storm. Next day came another of the sea wonders. The cry of land started them all from the dinner table; but the land happened to be an immense field of ice, which, with the inequalities of its surface and the effect of refraction, presented some appearance of a wooded country. On that night the cry of "Light a-head," while they were still several hundred miles from land, excited new astonishment. "All the knowing ones" clearly distinguished a magnificent revolver. The paddles were accordingly stopped to have a cast of the lead, but in another half hour it was ascertained that the revolver was a newly risen star.

At length land was really seen, and after a run of fourteen days, they cast anchor in the harbour of Halifax. But as Boston was their true destination they steered for it at once. Their progress had been rapid, for they entered Boston Bay in thirty-six hours from Halifax, a distance of 390 miles. Boston is more English looking than New York. The gently undulating shores of the bay, highly cultivated, bring to memory the green hills of England, and within the town the buildings and the inhabitants have a peculiarly English air.

As speed was an object, the party immediately left the town by the railway, passing through Lowell and reaching Nashua. This is one of the rapid growths of America. In 1819 this place was a village of but nineteen houses. It now contains 19,000 inhabitants, with churches, hotels, prisons, and banks. Here the party went off in two detachments, one in a sleigh with six horses, and the other rattled along in a coach-and-four. At the next stage the author exchanged the coach for a sleigh, a matter of no great importance to the world, but which may be mentioned as a caution against rash changes. For the first few miles the new conveyance went on merrily, and the passengers congratulated themselves on their wisdom. We must now let him speak for himself.

"The sun, as the day advanced, kept thawing the snow, till at last, on coming to a deep drift, we were repeatedly obliged to get out, sometimes walking up to the knees, and sometimes helping to lift the vehicle out of the snow. However, at length we fairly stuck fast, in spite of all our hauling and pushing. The horses struggled and plunged to no purpose, excepting that the leaders, after breaking part of their tackle, galloped off over the hills and far away, leaving us to kick our heels in the slush, till they were brought back after a chase of several miles."

The road now passed through Vermont, the state of green mountains. The country appeared striking; and Montpelier, where they breakfasted, seems to be a very pretty place, looking more the residence of hereditary ease and luxury, than the capital of a republic of thrifty graziers. It is, in fact, an assemblage of villas; the wide streets run between rows of trees, and the houses, each in its own little garden, are shaded by verandas.

In that very pleasant little book, the "Miseries of Human Life," one of those small calamities is, the being called at the wrong hour to go off in the wrong coach from a Yorkshire inn. Time and the railroad have changed all this in England, but in America we have the primitive misery well described.

The author, after forty-two hours of hard jolting, goes to bed at one o'clock to obtain a little repose, leaving orders to be called at five in the morning. He is wrapt in the profoundest of all possible slumbers, when a peal of blows is heard at his door. "In spite, however, of laziness, and a cold morning to boot," he says, "I had completed the operations of washing and dressing by candlelight, having even donned hat and gloves, to join my companions, when the waiter entered my room with a grin. 'I guess,' said the rascal, 'I have put my foot in it. Are you the man that wanted to be called at two?' 'No,' was my reply. 'Then,' said he, 'I calculate I have fixed the wrong man, so you had better go to bed again.' Having delivered himself of this friendly advice, he went to awaken my neighbour, who had all this time been quietly enjoying the sleep that properly belonged to me. Instead of following the fellow's recommendation, I sat up for the rest of the night." Whether the author possessed a watch we cannot tell, but if he was master of that useful and not very rare article, he might have saved himself his premature trouble, and escaped shaving at midnight.

On crossing into the Canadian territory, he encounters one of those evidences of popular liberty which belong to rather the American than the English side. In the village of St John's, some of the party went a-head to the principal inn, and as it was late at night, and their knocking produced no effect, they appealed to what they regarded as the most accessible of the landlord's susceptibilities, his pocket, by saying that they were fourteen, more coming, with a whole host of drivers. This appeal was the most unlucky possible, for the landlord had another sensibility, the fear of being tarred and feathered, if not hanged. On the door being opened at last, the landlord was not to be found; his brother wandered about, the very ghost of despair. The establishment was searched upside and downside, inside and outside, in vain; and they began to think themselves the cause of some domestic tragedy; but it must have been a late perpetration, for on looking into his bed, they found the lair warm.

However, after a short time, mine host returned with a face all smiles. The mystery was then explained. The election had taken place during the day, and the landlord, having taken the part of the candidate who eventually succeeded, was threatened with vengeance by the losing party. The arrival of the travellers convinced him that his hour was come, and he had jumped out of bed and hidden himself in some inscrutable corner. But a good supper reconciled every thing.

The author crossed the ice to Montreal, and had a showy view of the metropolis of the Canadas. A curious observation is suggested by Montreal, on the different characters of the English and French population. In the days of Wolf and Amherst, it was all French; but John Bull, with his spirit of activity and industry, has quietly become master of all the trading situations of the city, while the French have as quietly retreated, and spread themselves through the upper sections of it, to a great degree cut off from its commercial portions.

From Montreal the travel began. The heavy canoes were sent forward some days before, under the charge of some of the Company's officers, the light canoes waited for the author, with Colonel Oldfield, chief engineer in Canada, who was going up the country on a survey of the navigation, and the Earls of Mulgrave and Caledon, who were going to the Red River, buffalo-hunting.

All was now ready in form, and on the 4th of May the two canoes were floating on the Lactrine canal. The crews, thirteen to one vessel, and fourteen to the other, were partly Canadians, but principally Iroquois. Those voyageurs, as they are called, had each been supplied with a feather in his cap, in honour of the occasion, and evidently expected to produce a sensation on shore. But a north-wester blowing prevented the hoisting of their flags, which mulcted the pageant of much of its intended glory. These canoes are thirty-five feet in length, and five feet wide in the centre; drawing about eighteen inches water, and weighing between three and four hundred pounds; capitally fitted for a navigation among rocks, rapids, and portages; but they seem most uncomfortable in rough weather. The waves of the St Lawrence rolled like a sea, the gale was biting, and the snow drifted heavily in the faces of the party. In this luckless condition, we are not surprised at the intelligence, that at St Anne's Rapids, notwithstanding the authority of the poet, "they sang no evening hymn."

This style of travelling was not certainly much mingled with luxury. Next morning, after "toiling for six hours," they breakfasted, "with the wet ground for their table, and with rain in place of milk to cool their tea." On this day, while running close under the falls of the Rideau, they seem to have had a narrow escape from a finale to their voyage; their canoes being swept into the middle of the river, under an immense fall, fifty feet in height.

They now learned the art of bivouaching, and after a day of toiling through portages, reserving the severest of them, the Grand Calumet, for the renewed vigour of the morning, they made ready for the forest night. The description, brief as it is, is one among many which shows the artist eye.

"The tents were pitched in a small clump of pines, while round a blazing fire the passengers were collected, amid a medley of boxes, barrels, cloaks, and on the rock above the foaming rapids were lying the canoes; the men flitting about the fires as if they were enjoying a holiday, and watching a huge cauldron suspended above the fire. The whole with a background of dense woods and a lake."

Yet, startling as this "wooing of nature" in her rough moods may seem to the silk-and-velvet portion of the world, we doubt whether this wild life, with its desperate toil and its ground sleep, may not be the true charm of travel to saint, savage, or sage, when once fairly forced to the experiment. The blazing fire, the bed of leaves, the gay supper, made gayer still by incomparable appetite, and the sleep after all, in which the whole outward man remains imbedded, without the movement of a muscle and without a dream, until the morning awakes him up a new being, are fully worth all the inventions of art, to make us enjoy rest unearned by fatigue, and food without waiting for appetite. "The sleep of the weary man is sweet," said the ancient and wise king who slept among curtains of gold, and under roofs of cedar; the true way to taste that sleep is to spend a day, dragging canoes up Indian portages, and lie down with one's feet warmed by a pine blaze and one's back to the shelter of a forest.

But, as the time will assuredly come when this "life in the woods" will be no more, when huge inns will supersede the canopy of the skies, and down beds will make the memory of birch twigs and heather blossoms pass away, we give from authority the proceedings of an evening's rest, which the next generation will study with somewhat of the feeling of reading Tacitus De Moribus Germanorum.

As the sun approached his setting, every eye in the canoes, as they pulled along, was speculating on some dry and tolerably open spot on the shore. That once found, all were on shore in an instant. Then the axe was heard ringing among the trees, to prepare for the fires, and make room for the tents. In ten minutes, the tents were pitched, the fires blazing in front of each, and the supper preparing in all its diversities. The beds were next made, consisting of an oil-cloth laid on the ground, with blankets and a pillow; occasionally aided by great-coats, à discretion. The crews, drawing the canoes on shore, first made an inspection of their hurts during the day; and having done this, the little vessels were turned into a shelter, and each man wrapping himself in his blanket defied the weather and the world.

But this state of happiness was never destined to last long. About one in the morning, the cry, of "Leve, leve," broke all slumbers. We must acknowledge that the hour seems premature, and that the most patient of travellers might have solicited a couple of hours more of "tired Nature's sweet restorer." But the discipline of the bivouac was Spartan. If the slumberer did not instantly start up, the tent was pulled down about him, and he found himself half-smothered in canvass. However, we must presume that this seldom happened, and, within half an hour, every thing would be packed, the canoes laden, and the paddles moving to some "merry old song." In this manner passed the day, six hours of rest, to eighteen of labour, a tremendous disproportion, even to the sturdy Englishman, or the active Irishman, but perfectly congenial to the sinews and spirit of the gay voyageur.

A few touches more give the complete picture of the day. About eight, a convenient site would be selected for breakfast. Three-quarters of an hour being the whole time allotted for unpacking and packing, boiling and frying, eating and drinking. "While the preliminaries were arranging, the hardier among us would wash and shave, each person carrying soap and towel in his pocket, and finding a mirror in the same sandy or rocky basin which held the water. About two in the afternoon, we put ashore for dinner, and as this meal needed no fire, or, at least, got none, it was not allowed to occupy more than twenty minutes, or half an hour."

We recommend the following considerations to the amateur boat clubs, and others, who plume themselves on their naval achievements between Putney and Vauxhall bridges. Let them take the work of a Canadian paddle-man to heart, and lower their plumage accordingly.

"The quality of the work, even more than the quantity, requires operatives of iron mould. In smooth water, the paddle is plied with twice the rapidity of the oar, taxing both arms and lungs to the utmost extent. Amid shallows, the canoe is literally dragged by the men, wading to their knees or their loins, while each poor fellow, after replacing his drier half in his seat, laughingly strikes the heavier of the wet from his legs over the gunwale, before he gives them an inside berth. In rapids, the towing line has to be hauled along over rocks and stumps, through swamps and thickets, excepting that when the ground is utterly impracticable, poles are substituted, and occasionally also the bushes on the shore."

This however is "plain sailing," to the Portages, where the tracks are of all imaginable kinds and degrees of badness, and the canoes and their cargoes are never carried across in less than two or three trips; the little vessels alone monopolizing, in the first turn, the more expert half of their respective crews. Of the baggage, each man has to carry at least two pieces, estimated at a hundred and eighty pounds weight, which he suspends in slings placed across his forehead, so that he may have his hands free, to clear his way among the branches and standing or fallen trunks. Besides all this, the voyageur performs the part of bridge, or jetty, on the arrival of the canoe at its place of rest, the gentlemen passengers being carried on shore on the backs of these good-humoured and sinewy fellows.

For the benefit of the untravelled, we should say, that a Portage is the fragment of land-passage between the foot and head of a rapid, when the rush of the stream is too strong for the tow-rope.

At one of the halting-places on Lake Superior, a curious tale was told of the Indian's belief in a Providence, of which it had been the scene.

Three or four years before, a party of Salteaux, much pressed for hunger, were anxious to reach one of their fishing stations, an island about twenty miles from the shore. The spring had unluckily reached that point, when there was neither clear water, nor trustworthy ice. A council was being held, to consider the hard alternatives of drowning and starving, when an old man of influence thus spoke:

"You know, my friends, that the Great Spirit gave one of our squaws a child yesterday; now, he cannot have sent it into the world to take it away again directly. I should therefore recommend the carrying the child with us, as the pledge of safety."

We wish that we could have to record a successful issue to this anticipation. But the transit was too much for the metaphysics of the old Indian. They went on the treacherous ice, it gave way, and eight-and-twenty perished.

The Thunder Mountain on their route, struck them as "one of the most appalling objects" which they had seen, being a bleak rock twelve hundred feet high above the level of the lake, with a perpendicular face of its full height. The Indians say, that any one who can scale it, and "turn three times on the brink of its fearful wall, will live for ever." We presume, by dying first.

But the shores of this mighty lake, or rather fresh-water sea, which seemed destined to loneliness for ever, are now likely to hear the din of population and blaze with furnaces and factories. Its southern coasts are found to possess rich veins of copper and silver. Later inquiry has discovered on the northern shore "inexhaustible treasures of gold, silver, copper, and tin," and associations have been already formed to work them. Sir George Simpson even speaks of the future probability of their rivalling in point of wealth the Altai chain, and the Uralian mountains.

From Fort William, at the head of Lake Superior, the little expedition entered a river with a polysyllabic name, which leads farther on, to the "Far West." The banks were beautiful. When this country shall be peopled, it will be one of the resemblances of the primitive paradise.

It is all picturesque; the river finely diversified with rapids, and with one cataract which, though less in volume than Niagara, throws that far-famed fall into the background, in point of height and wildness of scenery. But we must leave description to the author's pen. "The river, during this day's march, passed through forests of elm, oak, birch, &c., being studded with isles not less fertile and lovely than its banks. And many a spot reminded us of the rich and quiet scenery of England. The paths of the numerous portages were spangled with roses, violets, and many other wild flowers—while the currant, the gooseberry, the raspberry, the plum, the cherry, and even the vine, were abundant. All this bounty of nature was imbued, as it were, with life, by the cheerful notes of a variety of birds, and by the restless flutter of butterflies of the brightest hues." He then makes the natural and graceful reflection—

"One cannot pass through this fair valley without feeling that it is destined to become, sooner or later, the happy home of civilised men, with their bleating flocks, and their lowing herds—with their schools and their churches—with their full garners, and their social hearths. At the time of our visit, the great obstacle in the way of so blessed a consummation was the hopeless wilderness to the eastward, which seemed to bar for ever the march of settlement and cultivation, but which will soon be an open road to the far west with all its riches. That wilderness, now that it is to yield up its long-hidden stores, bids fair to remove the impediments which hitherto it has itself presented. The mines of Lake Superior, besides establishing a continuity of route between the East and the West, will find their nearest and cheapest supply of agricultural produce in the valley of the Kaministaquoia."